N.C. goes deep to win 21st NCAA soccer title

Tod Leonard

There was a gallows-humor joke going around the North Carolina women’s soccer program all season long, and it was legendary coach Anson Dorrance delivering it.

The Tar Heels got off to such a tumultuous start to the year -- suffering injuries, missing top players – that Dorrance went around telling everybody that the way things were going they would win the NCAA Championship as the 64th and last seed.

It didn’t quite happen that way, because nobody affords that much pity to a program with 20 titles in 30 years, but North Carolina most certainly completed its most challenging road ever to a championship on Sunday.

Dorrance’s same substitute-at-will philosophy that was required at the season’s outset paid off handsomely in the title game as 21 North Carolina players combined to overwhelm Penn State 4-1 in the College Cup final in front of 6,930 at USD’s Torero Stadium.

The Tar Heels (15-5-3) got a second-minute goal from Kealia Ohai and a score from defender Hanna Gardner only 48 seconds into the second half to twice take the spirit out of the No. 1-seeded Nittany Lions (21-4-2), who were playing in their first national championship game.

Defender Santara Murray scored her first goal of the season and substitute Ranee Premji also found the net for the Tar Heels, who outshot Penn State 24-12. The only goal for the Nittany Lions, who boasted the nation’s No. 1 offense, was the equalizer scored by Taylor Schram in the 19th minute.

For North Carolina, Dorrance said there has never been another season like this one in his 34 years at Chapel Hill. Early on, he lost four players to various national team duties and two defenders to injuries. The Tar Heels had three losses and two ties by the end of September.

They’ve had a lot of SEASONS without three setbacks.

“We were reeling,” Dorrance said. “I’m not one of those guys who thinks losing builds anything but a lack of confidence.”

Even when stars Kealia Ohai and Crystal Dunn returned from winning a world championship with the Under-20 U.S. National Team, North Carolina didn’t jell right away. It lost two more critical games.

By the time tournament selection time arrived, the Tar Heels were a rather unimpressive 10-5-2. No team in college soccer had ever won the national championship with that kind of regular-season record.

Dorrance professed to be shocked by getting a No. 2 seed; he thought they'd be No. 3 or 4. But what the committee astutely observed is that North Carolina had all of its weapons fully stockpiled again, and if anything, the adversity only made the sleeping giant stronger.

“We were combat-hardened,” Dorrance said. “We had been there. We’d lost games. We didn’t like the taste of that. We were going to fight like tooth and nail to not experience that again.”

The Tar Heels needed penalty kicks to beat Baylor in the Round of 16, a goal-saving boot off the line at BYU in the Elite Eight, and two overtimes to defeat Stanford in the semifinals.

“So many elements had to fall into place for us to be champions,” Dorrance said.